Paper 2026/2085
Quantum implementation of Keccak-f(25) for emulator and quantum hardware, and application to quantum password cracking
Abstract
In this work, we present a quantum implementation of Keccak-$f(25)$, a toy version of SHA-3 introduced in the specification of Keccak, with the objective of using as few qubits as possible so that the resulting implementation can be run both on quantum emulators and on quantum hardware. The code, written in Qiskit, uses $25$ qubits representing the internal state. All computations are performed in-place, meaning that no ancillary qubit is required. We use this implementation to compare the number of logical and instruction-set-architecture quantum gates required to run Keccak-$f(25)$, both on emulators and on quantum hardware, as well as for Grover's algorithm on the hash function. Finally, we use our implementation to highlight the specificity of quantum password cracking using Grover's algorithm with Keccak-$f(25)$.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
-
PDF
- Category
- Implementation
- Publication info
- Preprint.
- Keywords
- Quantum computingKeccakSHA-3Groverpassword
- Contact author(s)
-
mathilde chenu @ ec europa eu
mario chizzini @ ec europa eu - History
- 2026-09-22: approved
- 2026-09-18: received
- See all versions
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2026/2085
- License
-
CC BY
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2026/2085,
author = {Mathilde Chenu and Mario Chizzini},
title = {Quantum implementation of Keccak-f(25) for emulator and quantum hardware, and application to quantum password cracking},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2026/2085},
year = {2026},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/2085}
}
